Month: September 2008

They’re calling it “America’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

“On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 504 points, its worst drop since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But Bush did not address the nation that night.

“Instead, he held a state dinner for the president of Ghana. Gratin of Maine lobster, late-summer corn pudding, ginger-scented farm lamb and graham cracker crumble with cocoa pod shell was served. Eleven members of the cast of ‘The Lion King’ came down from Broadway and performed. It was quite a bash. The Washington Post described President Bush and Ghanaian President John Kufuor as ‘ebullient.’ ”

Good things are happening right now: The news media has finally, finally, FINALLY grown a set, and is asking the McCain and Palin camp some hard questions, and demanding answers.

For Palin, the shit just keeps flowin’ on down. I can’t believe the kind of stuff I’m reading about her, on a daily basis.

McCain and his “soul mate” are goin’ down hard.

And oh, yeah, Palin’s post-election political career in Alaska? Toast. Even a conservative speaking career may be out. Conservatives will wake up on Nov. 12 and find themselves in bed with the ultimate Coyote Date, and will chew their own arms off to get away from her.

This is from an email I sent out this morning, the anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The main part is the “Questions on the Anniversary” at the bottom. The “special note to friends” at the beginning was intended to be a tiny little side note, but grew into the not-so-tiny thing it is. Email begins:

I couldn’t resist sending this around, mostly because when I woke up this morning, the first thing I thought of was how much mileage Republicans and conservatives have gotten out of the Sept. 11 tragedy.

Last time I started a new job, as a copy editor at a newspaper, after a number of years as a senior editor at magazines, I was faced with a lot of new experiences. New software, new workflows, even new ways of writing headlines.

For instance, whereas the magazines all used story headlines referred to as “label heads,” such as “The Joy of Skiing Cross Country,” newspapers use “sentence heads” or “subject-verb heads,” like “Skiers Find Joy in Cross Country Skiing.”

I got into a little email dustup recently with some people over McCain and Palin. In reply to some of the glowing testimonials to Gov. Palin that had been sent me, I made the point that she has been the governor of Alaska, an entire state with fewer people in it than the single city of San Francisco, for less than two years. And if that so-called “executive experience” was so great, then former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani, who for eight years ran a city with 12 times the population of the entire state of Alaska, should REALLY be something special. (And frankly, I would much rather have Rudy Giuliani a beat away from John McCain’s 72-year-old heart than Sarah Palin.)

I picked this up from StupidEvilBastard, which he found at Beyond Binary:

The auto-suggest feature of Google’s new Chrome browser does more than just help users get where they are going. It will also give Google a wealth of information on what people are doing on the Internet besides searching.

Provided that users leave Chrome’s auto-suggest feature on and have Google as their default search provider, Google will have access to any keystrokes that are typed into the browser’s Omnibox, even before a user hits enter.

What’s more, Google has every intention of retaining some of that data even after it provides the promised suggestions. A Google representative told CNET News that the company plans to store about 2 percent of that data–and plans to store it along with the Internet Protocol address of the computer that typed it.

In theory, that means that if one were to type the address of a site–even if they decide not to hit enter–they could leave incriminating evidence on Google’s servers.

So far, I’m a little bit iffy about where it puts the bookmarks folder, but it may be that I’m doing something wrong.

That said, I LOOOOVE the simplicity of the browser window — the lack of that cluttered “everything and the kitchen sink” that takes up so much real estate in other browsers. I love the tabs that you can peel off into new windows. I love the top-bar where you can park your most-used web addresses. I love the ease with which you can create a new tab, just by clicking on the little plus next to the existing tabs. I like the combined URI and search window. I love the way the browser works with you once you start typing into that window. And the opening window that has 9 icons of your recently visited sites? Wonderful. And so far, it seems really fast.

I’m experimenting with something internal, and some interesting stuff is coming out of it.

You know that “little voice” we all have? Or maybe it’s little voices, plural, since the thing is characterized in cartoons as an angel and devil on opposite shoulders, both telling you to do different things.

I may have said this in the past here, but I think of us humans as having “humany” and “beasty” parts. (That second one is correct as spelled; it’s not “beastly.” And yeah, I make up my own words sometimes. Hey, I’m a writer.)

The beasty part is the part that deals with innate drives – sex, hunger, love, anger, allegiance, etc. The humany part is the part that deals with reason and … well, wisdom.